


Don't Try to Fix Me (I'm Not Broken)

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2k19 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Aromantic Asexual Keith (Voltron), Autistic Keith (Voltron), Bad Things Happen Bingo, Foster Kid Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Prompt: Rape/Non-Con, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Sad Keith (Voltron), Trauma, Victim Blaming, Worried Shiro (Voltron), corrective rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21585799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: WARNING: This fic does not portray the assault itself, but DOES portray events directly leading up to and following the assault. Please read the tags carefully and use your discretion before reading. Thank you.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2k19 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554010
Comments: 17
Kudos: 475
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Don't Try to Fix Me (I'm Not Broken)

She said she was going to fix him.

That’s what she kept saying, over and over, as she pulled him into the supply closet. After the stupid student mixer Shiro had forced him to go to, after she and her friends had pinned him into a corner with sharp eyes and sharper questions, after they tricked and forced him into admitting things he’d never told anyone. 

He tried to ignore her as she followed him down the hall. The way all the adults said to do-- if someone bothers you, ignore them, and they’ll go away. But she hadn’t gone away. 

Even now, hours after, after going through the entire Garrison’s supply of hot water, he could still feel the press of her nails into his shoulder when she’d shoved him against the wall. 

At fourteen he was still small for his age. This girl was a year above him, and three inches taller. Her blonde hair had made a curtain over her shoulder; a curtain that grew into a wall when she leaned in. 

Keith’s first kiss was nothing like everyone said it would be. He didn’t feel the butterflies in his stomach or like his head was in the clouds. It was searing and suffocating. He’d brought his hands up to push her off, but she’d just grabbed them and pinned them to the wall next to his head. And at that moment, Keith had been absolutely terrified. 

He couldn’t hit somebody again. If he did he’d be thrown out, ripped away from everything he’d come to care about. Away from flying, and his future, and Shiro, and if he hit a girl there was no way he’d be able to talk his way out of it. But he felt so _sick--_ surely this wasn’t what this whole experience was supposed to feel like.

“Wait--” he managed to say when she pulled away. Her sly grin made his stomach churn. “Stop. Lemme go. I don’t want to.”

She pouted, making doe eyes and fluttering her lashes. It was supposed to make her look innocent and cajoling, but to him her green eyes looked like the color of acid, ready to dissolve him into nothing. 

“Aw, you’re playing hard to get. Cute. Don’t worry, I’ll show you what to do.”

She let his arms down, but maintained her grip around his wrists, and after a quick glance around began to pull him forward. 

He planted his feet and resisted. “No, no! I said no!”

“Don’t worry,” she said again, managing to pull him a few inches despite his efforts. “It’ll feel good, promise.”

“I don’t want to--”

Her manicured nails dug into his wrist when she released one arm to open the supply closet door. Keith pulled as hard as he could, eyes darting every which way, looking for any way out. But there was none-- he’d ducked out of the mixer early, trying to escape her, but she’d followed, and now they were all alone with no security guards in sight. The door opened and she hauled him inside, even as he kicked and struggled like an angry cat. 

“Yes you do, all boys do.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though she was the world’s leading expert on the human male. “You were probably thinking about it the whole time. You just won’t admit it.”

“No!” His entreaties were falling on deaf ears but he couldn’t give up. He had to believe he could convince her, he had to, or-- “I told you, earlier, I told you, I don’t want this, I never have, I don’t--”

It was pitch black in the closet, so Keith didn’t see it coming when she hooked her hands into his belt. Her fingers were icy cold, and he let out a yelp, until one of those hands retracted and planted over his lips.

“So noisy already,” she purred. “Don’t worry, little boy. I’ll make you a man.”

He tried another protest. It was muffled under her palm. Even in the dark her eyes glowed like nuclear waste.

“I’ll fix you.”

* * *

He didn’t feel fixed. In fact, he’d never felt more broken. He’d staggered back to his dorm and straight into the shower, staying there for god knows how long, but no matter how hot he made the water or how hard he scrubbed at himself, he couldn’t erase the imprints of her fingers. Couldn’t get rid of the grime. 

He felt sick. Maggot-riddled. Rotten from the inside out. 

He shivered the whole time he got into his pajamas. It took a while; he couldn’t bear to look down at himself. Then he went back into his dorm and shoved the uniform he’d been wearing into the trash with shaking hands. He’d have to do laundry more often to keep anyone from realizing, but he’d take that over ever having to look at that fabric again. 

He crawled under the covers without turning the lights off. And for a long time he just lay there, staring at the wall, trying not to think about it but unable to think about anything else. 

Clearly it hadn’t worked. Unless this was how sex was supposed to make you feel. But why hadn’t it? She’d seemed convinced it would. 

“That’s so not normal,” she’d said after she’d squeezed the secret out of him, her eyes growing wide and pitying as she spoke. Keith had shrunk back, knowing from previous experience that it wasn’t normal to not feel attraction, to not get what the big deal was when the teachers separated them into two blushing groups to teach them about human anatomy, and not liking the glint in her eye. 

“You should see a doctor or something,” one of her friends had chimed in, and some of the others had nodded in agreement. 

But she’d argued, said, “I’m sure it’s not that serious. You know how men are, never more than two thoughts away from it, if you know what I mean.” Here she’d winked, and her friends giggled. “He’s probably just a little shy.”

The memory made him squirm. He didn’t understand why-- why she’d pushed him so hard, why she’d been so interested in the first place, why he was so deeply flawed that such an extreme measure hadn’t corrected him. 

A part of him dimly wondered if he’d see the girl again (walking in the halls, or in the cafeteria, or in class) and the thought made him shudder from head to toe. 

He jolted violently at the sudden buzzing sound that filled the room, but it was just his tablet sitting on his desk, lit up with a message notification. He curled into a tighter ball and didn’t move to get it, until it buzzed again. And again. And again.

Eventually he forced himself upright and approached the desk, stomach all in knots. For a moment there was an irrational fear that he’d pick it up to see something from her, regardless of the fact that she didn’t have his information, but the worry was unfounded. The message was from Shiro. 

He opened it with a swipe of his finger. The first message read _How was the mixer?_ Accompanied by a smiley face.

And Keith burst into tears. 

* * *

Keith watched the sunrise with red eyes. He hadn’t slept a wink. His eyes burned, but he couldn’t close them. When he blinked he saw green staring back at him. 

At six thirty he left his room, making his way mechanically to the dining hall. It was still early, so there were only one or two other students there. He sat far away and ate a few bites of cereal that he didn’t taste before his stomach started to turn and he gave up. Then he just sat, staring blankly, a wave of cold rushing through him whenever another person came through the doors. 

He didn’t know how he’d react if she walked in. Maybe he’d scream. Maybe he’d run. Maybe he’d do nothing at all. 

The clock read eight oh two when he left the cafeteria. The noise had been steadily climbing, and now his head was pounding with all the pointless chatter. Words like termites, burrowing under his skin, itching under the stiff sleeves of his uniform, gnawing away at him until nothing remained. It almost hurt, but an empty, hollow kind of hurt. 

He wasn’t sure where he was going anymore. He was just walking. His body trying to go along with the schedule he’d so religiously kept, while his brain floundered and drowned. He wound up in an unfamiliar hallway, closely packed with doors, name cards filled with pointless squiggles. 

Far away a bell rang. Time for class. 

Pausing, Keith finally focused his eyes. He was looking for something to tell him where he was, but the sign he found himself staring at wasn’t a map. It was a piece of green paper, printed with a smile and a cheerful _Come on in!_

His gaze slid to the left. On the door placard was the name _Jesse McIntyre, Counselor._

He drew his arms in close as he considered. He really should just go to class… but they’d mentioned this at the orientation, hadn’t they? That the counselor was there to help them? A few months ago he wouldn’t even have considered it, no way he would trust a random adult with anything, but things were different here. Weren’t they? Shiro was, at least.

With a deep, shuddering breath, he pushed the door open. 

Mr. McIntyre was at his desk in the left corner, facing the door, tapping away at his keyboard with a focused expression. He looked pleasant enough-- middle aged, bespectacled, with receding gray hair atop his head. He looked up when he heard the door open, and instead of frowning in confusion at seeing a student out of class, he merely gave a friendly smile. 

“Hello, come on in!” he said in a perfect imitation of his door sign. Even as he looked at Keith, his fingers didn’t stop moving at the keyboard. “Have a seat, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

Keith tiptoed inside. It was standard Garrison fare, but the orange armchair in the other corner at least looked comfy, so he perched himself on the edge of it. He felt a little lightheaded, like he was panicking, but from far away. His skin rippled with shivers. 

After a few more seconds of rapid typing the counselor sat back from the computer with a flourish. Then, making sure Keith was watching, he used his feet to roll his chair across the room until they were sitting across from each other. The metallic shriek of the wheels made Keith wince, and the man gave a chagrined smile.

“Sorry, metal on metal isn’t great on the acoustics. So, what’s your name, young man?”

“Keith,” he heard himself answer. His mouth was painfully dry. “Keith Kogane.”

Mr. McIntyre’s expression brightened even more, if that was possible. “Ah, yes, I’ve heard of you. Our new prodigy.”

Keith swallowed down his immediate urge to run. He’d taken a chance on Shiro, and it had worked out better than he’d ever dreamed. It was worth it to take another one. 

“What seems to be the problem, Keith? You’re looking a little worse for wear. Didn’t sleep well?”

Keith shook his head. He’d meant to start talking again, but the words had gotten caught in his teeth. 

“Mind if I ask why not?”

The counselor’s voice wasn’t as deep as Shiro’s. But the tone of concern was mostly the same, so if he stared at the carpet and pretended really hard, he could imagine it was Shiro he was talking to. It was the only way he’d be able to get the words out. 

“I went to the student mixer last night.” His voice was so quiet, barely a whisper, but Mr. McIntyre simply nodded without any indication of annoyance. “And I, uh…” _How do I word this?_ “I… left with a girl.”

Mr. McIntyre blinked. Clearly not what he’d been expecting, but once he rebooted his expression turned conspiratory, sly in a way that made Keith’s stomach twist. For a moment he felt nails pressing into his shoulders again and he shuddered, one hand rising from his crossed-armed position to press over the marks. 

“Well, technically student fraternizing is forbidden under Garrison regulation, but I don’t see the problem in a teenage boy having a good time now and again.” God, there was that knowing look again. 

Keith shut his eyes. He had to, or he’d shut down again, like he had in the closet. Turned off. Gone far, far away, to a place he still hadn’t returned from entirely. 

“No, I, um… I mean, I didn’t… I didn’t want to.”

He could practically hear the head tilt in the counselor’s voice. “What do you mean? Didn’t want to what?”

“Didn’t want to…” He swallowed again, this time trying to push down shame, but he could already feel it painting his cheeks red. He didn’t want to say it. The rest of him was already so dirty, he didn’t want to paint his tongue with it, too. “She p-pulled me into a closet and-- and I didn’t want to, but she di-did it anyway.” 

There was a ponderous pause during which Keith held his breath until he felt his lungs would explode. 

Then, slowly, the man asked, “Did you two have sex?”

Keith’s entire body flushed with fire at the word but, still with his eyes closed and head subconsciously turned away, he nodded. 

“Do you regret that?”

_What? Regret?_ “No, I mean, yes, but--”

“Ah, I see,” the man interrupted, now with an infuriating tone of practiced pity. “She’ll want a relationship now and you’re not interested. Classic teenage drama. Just let her down easy, it’ll all blow over. Don’t worry.”

_Don’t worry._

Green eyes flashed in his mind. Nails raked along his skin. Undeniable fear-- no, terror-- welled up in his chest. Somewhere in all of that, he found anger.

“No!” he shouted, making Mr. McIntyre jump in his seat. “Will you just let me talk?”

The smile transformed into a scolding frown. “Now, Mr. Kogane, no need to get riled up.”

“I didn’t want to! She _made_ me!”

He held up a hand to stop him. “I already said I wasn’t going to get you in trouble, you don’t need to start placing blame.”

“No.” At some point tears had risen, and a few of them spilled when his voice caught, leaving scorching streaks over his face. “You’re not listening. Please, for fuck’s sake, just--”

“Mr. Kogane!”

The man’s shout rang through the room, and all at once everything stopped. All at once Keith remembered reality-- that he was a desert rat one infraction away from being thrown back to the coyotes, in a place where he had exactly one person on his side, and that the next time he made a teacher’s eyes flash like that he’d be toast. 

The hurricane of frustration in him died away. He was still in its wake; still, quiet, and detached. He’d gone away again. 

“Nevermind,” he said in a dull tone, already getting to his feet. Mr. McIntyre looked baffled, but Keith didn’t notice. He was already berating himself for making the mistake of thinking anyone would care. He was stupid. Stupid and broken. “I have class.”

When he walked out the door, he left all of his stupid hopes behind him. 

* * *

Something was wrong with Keith. 

It was impossible for Shiro to ignore. For the past week he’d been pale and quiet, quieter than normal, and every passing day made the bags under his eyes deeper. He hadn’t wanted to push-- he found that serious talks with Keith went better when Keith was the one to initiate them. But he’d been dodging Shiro’s prods and openings like his life depended on it, and Shiro was running short on patience. He knew something was wrong, he couldn’t just let it go on without doing something. 

So that morning, a week after Shiro had first noticed the changes, he arranged for Adam to be out of the apartment when Keith came over for his mentoring session. It began as it had every day before-- Keith was distant and disconnected, staring right through him rather than meeting his gaze, and his voice was flat. 

After a few minutes to settle in at the breakfast bar, Keith’s work spread out on the counter before them, Shiro put his plan into action. 

“Keith, have you been feeling alright?”

“I’m fine,” he answered, automatically, the same way he had every other time Shiro had asked. He didn’t look up from his worksheet. This was usually where he’d notice Keith wasn’t in the mood to talk and leave it alone, but not today. Today he was going to push. 

“Are you sure? You’ve seemed off for about a week, now.” Shiro frowned to himself, a thought occurring to him he hadn’t considered before. “Since the mixer, actually.”

Keith went rigid. His knuckles turned white around his pencil. But he didn’t say anything. Shiro had to keep pressing. 

“Did something happen there?”

He shook his head. But his eyes had fluttered away from his paper and locked onto the apartment door, like he was planning an escape route. So Shiro took his hand off the counter and settled into the seat beside him, trying to make himself smaller and less threatening. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Keith and make it all worse. 

“If something did happen, you know you can tell me, right?”

Keith gave a stiff nod. His other hand came up and rubbed at his eye-- they’d been red and dry lately, too. Shiro got the sinking feeling he knew why. 

“Keith.”

The gentle repetition of his name, with just the softest hint of pressure, was enough to break him down. In seconds his posture changed, his arms going down to his sides and his head ducking almost as far as it would go, not letting Shiro see his expression.

“I had sex!” he blurted out. His voice was absolutely steeped in mortification, though it took Shiro a moment to register it through the shock. 

_Did he just say… but he’s only…_

“Sex?” He sounded dumbfounded, and felt it too. “You’re only fourteen.” Shiro didn’t think he sounded angry, but all the same Keith recoiled as far as he could without falling out of his chair. 

“I know, I know, I didn’t want to, I told her no, but she kept on going.” Keith’s words fell from his lips in a tidal wave, like he was afraid of not getting it all out, like he didn’t want Shiro to misunderstand. But he was going so quickly it was hard to keep up. “She was at the mixer and she kept asking me a bunch of questions and then she followed me out and I didn’t _want_ to but she _made_ me and--”

“Wait, wait wait wait, wait, what?” His ears were ringing, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly. “What did you just say?”

“I’m sorry!” Keith wailed, and that snapped Shiro out of his stupor right quick. Without the fog of disbelief Keith looked even more of a mess than before-- he was shaking like a leaf, his hands fisted into his hair and pulling, voice thick with tears. “I’m sorry, she said she was gonna fix me, but it didn’t work. It didn’t work, I’m still broken, but I’m trying not to be, I swear, don’t make me leave.”

Shiro took a few deep breaths. He was back with the program, but he was still trying to process all the things Keith had just said. The things he implied. 

“Ok, let’s calm down for a sec. Let me get this straight: A girl at the mixer made you have sex with her?”

He barely nodded, his whole back shaking with a muffled sob. “I’m sorry, I know it was wrong.”

“Keith… that’s not sex. That’s rape.” That was the wrong thing to say.

There was a quick intake of breath, then Keith leapt from his seat. In an instant he was across the room at the door, trying to get it open. Fortunately it was locked, and after a few seconds of frantic pulling, Keith put his shoulder to the wall and curled in on himself, like he could melt right through it if he just wished hard enough. 

“I didn’t want to,” he was saying between ragged sobs that sounded painful as they forced their way from his chest. “I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to, I swear, I’m sorry.”

Tears of his own were building in Shiro’s eyes, but for now he pushed them back. He needed to be careful and aware here, lest he screw up the situation even more than he already had. So he remained seated, only turning his chair in Keith’s direction, and when he spoke he kept his voice low and calm, hopefully less threatening. 

“That’s not what I meant. I meant she raped you, Keith.”

He shook his head with a forlorn sniffle. “That’s not-- she was trying to fix me, and she-- she said that boys--”

Shiro couldn’t let that sentence be finished. “No, that’s not true.” Seeing how Keith winced at his slightly harder tone, he reined it back in. “Hey, bud, can you look at me?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, but eventually Keith dared a glance through his bangs. Shiro tried to keep his expression even, despite every fiber of his being screaming for him to hide Keith away where no one else would ever hurt him again. Where he’d never have to look that scared again. 

“No matter what, if you said no and she did it anyway, that’s rape. Period.”

Keith looked away. His hands pulled at his hair. 

“Could’ve fought back,” he muttered with another harsh tug. “Should’ve fought back. Stupid, stupid.”

“Hey, hey, hold on.” Shiro was absolutely lost. He’d never seen Keith so shaken before; he was jumping through various emotions at record speed, and even if he hadn’t been Shiro probably wouldn’t have known what to do, anyway. He was only twenty-one, for fuck’s sake. He was so not qualified for this. 

But Keith trusted him. He had to try his best.

“Here, let’s sit down.” He gestured towards the sofa. “Would that be ok?”

Keith hesitated. He looked like he had the first day they met— cautious, ready to bolt or lash out on a hair trigger. But he didn’t— this time he gave a tiny nod and shuffled over to the couch. Shiro didn’t miss how he went around the far side, so he went to the closer one, leaving the middle open between them. 

“Ok,” he said once they were seated. Keith was all closed up, leaning away from him and into the arm of the couch, keeping his eyes down and away. Every bit of him screamed _don’t touch me._ “Let’s start from the beginning. Do you think you can tell me what happened?” 

And so, in between stutters and gasps and pauses to conceal tears, Keith told him the story. The girl, the assault, the catastrophic attempt at reporting. That was what made his blood boil the most, and it took every shred of his not-insignificant self control not to start screaming. 

By the time the story was over their positions had changed. Keith had steadily migrated closer to him until they sat side by side. He was still pulling on his hair, and at this point in the telling his words came out in snarls.

“He wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t let me explain. Just had all of these stupid assumptions…”

Shiro let him rant. The anger was a balm, he knew, a bandage over the deeper wounds he wasn’t ready to feel yet. 

Once the rage had faded away, Shiro finally spoke. “I’m so sorry, Keith. That shouldn’t have happened to you. Any of it.”

Keith sniffled and gave a rough shrug.

“Would it be alright if I touched you?”

There was a barely detectable nod, so he slowly reached over, broadcasting his movements as he wrapped an arm around Keith’s shoulders. He kept the hold soft, and after a moment of tension, Keith leaned into it ever so slightly. 

“Keith…” He didn’t know if this was the right thing to bring up at the moment, but it was something he had to know if he was going to get anything done about this incident. “You kept saying she was trying to fix you. What do you mean by that?”

All at once Keith stiffened up again. Shiro rubbed his arm in an attempt to be soothing, but Keith cringed away from the motion. In doing so his hair shifted, giving Shiro a glance at his expression, and what he saw made him go cold.

Underneath all of his shields, Keith looked terrified. 

“I’m working on it,” he answered, his voice gruff. “I’ll fix it myself.”

Realization made his heart sink. 

Whatever it was he’d told that girl, he was afraid that if he told Shiro, that he would… that he…

God, he felt sick.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Shiro managed to say. “It’s alright if you don’t want to. But whatever it was, that girl was wrong. You’re not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. And what she did was wrong.” 

“How do you know?” Keith asked bitterly. But Shiro could feel him trembling. 

“Because I know you. And I know that nothing could ever justify what she did. You hear me? There is no justification. And you’re not perfect, no one is, but you’re not broken, either.” 

There was silence for a moment, during which Keith slumped further into Shiro’s hold. His heart ached for him— poor kid must be so tired.

Now for the hard part.

“We need to report this. You know that, right?”

“Report what? Nobody believes me.” His tone was glum. Shiro gave him a squeeze, and this time he accepted it.

“Maybe not, but they’ll believe me.”

He snorted. “And then do what? They’ll just ask why I didn’t fight back. Or they’ll give her a suspension, but nothing else, or every news station in the state will be talking about it. The Garrison won’t risk it.”

Shiro weighed his next words carefully. Everything Keith said was probable, but Shiro didn’t want to let this go. He couldn’t. Keith had spent too long being hurt by people who would never feel the consequences. He wouldn’t let this be one of them. 

“I’ll take it to Iverson myself. And I won’t back down until he does something about it.”

“What about Kerberos?”

Shiro opened his mouth, then paused. That wasn’t what he’d expected Keith to say. 

“You want to go on that mission more than anything in the world. But if you make a big deal out of this, what’s stopping them from taking it away from you in retaliation?” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “I can’t ruin that for you.”

“Keith…” How was he supposed to argue with that? This boy was unfathomable. With nothing else left to him, Shiro fell back onto pleading. “Just let me try. Can you do that? Let me try?”

He let Keith ponder that for a moment. He breathed, listened to the slight _whoosh_ of air through conditioning vents and the rustling of the abandoned worksheet on the counter. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and ignored it. 

Eventually Keith shifted, leaning his head further against Shiro’s chest. His voice was quiet.

“Ok. You can try.”

Shiro finally breathed out. There was a strange combination of relief and dread dancing in his chest, all twined together with strings of anger and a few lingering shreds of disbelief. But he had a chance now to make it better. 

“Thank you.”

Keith yawned. Shiro couldn’t quite summon a laugh, but he huffed a bit of air through his nose and hoped it would be enough.

“Tired?”

“Mhm,” Keith hummed, smothering another yawn behind his hand. “Haven’t slept very well.”

“Why don’t you spend the rest of our time resting up then?” Shiro suggested, and before he could protest, added, “Sleep is more important to getting good scores than practice sheets.”

“Alright, I guess I can try.” He didn’t sound optimistic, so Shiro rubbed his arm in a hopefully supporting manner. 

“I’ll be right here with you.”

Five minutes later, after Keith was situated on the couch with the brown blanket that he liked the most, Shiro finally took a moment to check his phone. There was a message from Adam, patiently waiting to be answered. 

_So, did you figure it out?_

Shiro glanced over at the couch. Keith was facing the cushions, curled into a small ball. His breathing wasn’t quite slow enough to be asleep, but definitely more relaxed than it had been since he walked into the house. 

He texted back: _Yeah, I figured it out._

* * *

Surprisingly… Keith felt better.

He’d been dreading Shiro finding out all week, and the idea of him actually trying to do something about what had happened should be terrifying, for all the reasons he’d said to him, but for some reason he wasn’t. 

Ok, maybe he was a little. But at the moment, curled up on Shiro’s couch listening to him putter around the kitchen, the fear felt far away and dim. Without it there to cloud his mind he was able to think clearly again. Objectively. 

Shiro knew a lot. He was young, but he had a lot of life experience. It showed in his eyes. And he was connected-- he wasn’t like Keith, he had a lot of friends in a lot of different places. He even had a boyfriend. 

So maybe, just maybe… he’d know what was wrong with him. 

Quickly, he sat up. He didn’t want to draw this out. If he did, there was a chance the same overwhelming panic from before would come back and stop him from revealing to Shiro what had triggered this whole awful situation to begin with. 

He couldn’t let that happen. He needed to know the answer, before more bad things had the chance to happen. 

“Shiro?”

Shiro, at the sink busily washing dishes, turned and glanced over his shoulder. The smile on his face was gentle and warm, like a sunbeam. 

“Yeah, bud?”

Keith stubbornly swallowed down the anxiety that tried to rise. He would get the words out this time. He had to. 

“I think I--” No, too weak. He couldn’t seem soft, he was already exposing too much vulnerability even by asking. He tried again. “I wanna talk some more.”

Shiro seemed surprised, but not negatively so. “Alright,” was all he said before reaching for a dish towel to dry his hands. He brought it with him as he circled the counter and leaned up against it, not coming closer until Keith gave an indication that he should. 

What had he done to deserve someone like Shiro?

“What’s up?”

With a deep breath, Keith flipped back the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. There his eyes rested-- even now he wasn’t quite brave enough to look Shiro in the eye while he admitted to his flaws. 

“Um… about the-- the girl. Why she…” He trailed off, not able to finish, but he caught Shiro’s nod. It was ok to skip over it. “It was because of what I told her. At the mixer.” 

Shiro sidled a few steps closer. Keith didn’t dare look at his face. 

“What did you tell her?”

Now or never. 

“She was asking about girlfriends. And I told her I didn’t want one.” Silence; he took a breath. “That I’ve never wanted one. And that’s…” He had to stop and bite his lip. Tears were beginning to well up, but he didn’t want them now. “I know that’s not normal.”

Shiro made a strange noise at the back of his throat. A laugh, maybe?

“Keith, I hope you know by now that there’s nothing wrong with not liking girls.”

_Shit._ Keith kicked himself. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t like girls, _and_ I don’t like boys. I don’t like _anybody.”_ Staring at a random point on Shiro’s chest, Keith noticed his chin move as he prepared to talk and cut him off. He needed to get everything out clean, before something like the scene in the counselor’s office happened again. 

“That’s not normal, and I know it’s not, but I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe it’s because I’m on the spectrum, maybe it was all the foster homes that broke something in my brain, maybe I’m just pretending to myself to feel special or maybe I’m a freaking alien or something but--”

“Woah, woah, Keith,” Shiro interrupted, and Keith’s cheeks flushed. That was the third or fourth time he’d rambled today, wasn’t it? He must be getting on Shiro’s nerves by now. 

If he was, he couldn’t tell by risking a glance at his expression. His brow was furrowed, but in concentration, not in anger. LIke he was trying to figure out a particularly tricky maneuver in the simulator. 

“How do I explain this… ok, so you know how being gay or bi or what have you works, right?”

“Uh, yeah, but I already said--”

“I know, just let me talk for a minute.”

Keith bit the inside of his lip, but all the same fell silent again. Shiro dared a few steps closer, and when Keith didn’t recoil or protest, took up a position on the other side of the coffee table. 

“Right, so you know how people like who they like and they can’t change that, and it doesn’t make them wrong or broken, right?”

He bobbed his head. He was beginning to get a little frustrated-- everyone knew that love was love and it didn’t matter who it was, but that was just the problem. Love was love, but what do you do when you don’t love at all? 

“Well there are a lot of different identities in the gay community. A lot of them overlap, a lot of them are confusing and have a lot of nuance, and a lot of them aren’t very well known. One of them is called asexuality.”

Keith frowned at the floor. He’d learned that word in biology, for organisms that reproduced without sex, but how could that possibly apply to humans?

Shiro continued without missing a beat. “It means you don’t feel sexually attracted to people. There’s another, aromantic, that means you don’t feel romantically attracted. Don’t want to date, don’t want to have intercourse. Sometimes they go together, but not always. Are you following me?”

“You think I’m…”

“Asexual, yeah.” He gave Keith another sunbeam smile. “It’s an orientation, just like being straight or gay. There’s nothing wrong or broken about you at all.”

“But… but…” the protests were weak, but Keith couldn’t help it. He was baffled. How many movies had he watched that claimed love was the most powerful force in the world? How many singers had developed albums and number one hits to singing about the pain and euphoria of love? If this was a real thing… why hadn’t he known it?

Why hadn’t she known it?

“Everyone says that love is what makes us human,” he found himself saying, and Shiro’s smile melted away into a complicated expression Keith couldn’t quite read. 

“Romance isn’t the only type of love out there. There’s familial love, paternal love, platonic love. You don’t have to be someone’s partner to love them with everything you have.” 

Keith’s hands retracted into fists, his thumb rubbing over his knuckles in a small circle. He wasn’t sure if he should ask this last question, but he’d gotten this far. Might as well take the final plunge.

“So, then… why?” He immediately cringed at the vagueness of his inquiry, but luckily Shiro understood, the way he always seemed to. 

“Because our society isn’t great at recognizing things outside what people think is ‘normal’.” The sassy air quotes and eye roll he pinned to the word managed to summon a small smile from Keith before he continued. “There are people out there who don’t think it’s ok to be ace or aro. People who think it’s biologically impossible, people who think it means you’re apathetic or cold, people who think something in your body has gone wrong. But Keith?”

Their eyes met. 

“All of those people are wrong.”

He said it with such strong assurance. As outlandish as it seemed to him at first, Keith found that he couldn’t completely disbelieve it when Shiro was the one who told him, looking at him like that. Shiro wouldn’t lie to him. After all of this, even after the terrible things that had happened, one thing hadn’t changed. 

He could always trust Shiro. 

**Author's Note:**

> It might be a few days before the next one of these comes out because I'm still doing NaNoWriMo and I have finals, but it won't be too long of a wait I hope.


End file.
